News

At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con Nickelodeon will debut a brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle VR experience designed to immerse fans in an animated version of New York City. The VR experience will be based on the reimagined Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, not the classic show or the current live action films.

Fans at Comic-Con this year will reportedly be able to “have a conversation with Mikey or Donnie” inside VR as the characters will be voiced live on the scene by Brandon Mychal Smith and Josh Brener, respectively.

Here’s the opening animation for the new show:

Inside the experience users will stand on a rooftop of the animated New York City skyline and chat with still-frame versions of the iconic characters.

The experience will be titled Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live and it’s being created by Nickelodeon’s Entertainment Lab. The internal studio has already created Slime Zone, a social VR experience for IMAX VR centers, and is invested in Dreamscape Immersive for other location-based VR content.

There will also be a panel about the new series on July 19th. There’s not much chance of this getting released for at-home headsets at all, but if you plan on going and intend to check this out, let us know down in the comments below!

The latest update for Google’s Tilt Brush VR art app adds new ways to paint and a more accessible introduction for beginners.

Tilt Brush 1.6 includes 12 new brushes that further expand the range of 3D art you can make. Google says these new options will like users create more natural landscapes and even lifelike characters. A new Hull Brush, for example, lets you paint 3D objects by moving your controller.

To give that a little context, popular VR artist Danny Bittman noted on Twitter that the brush makes sculpting inside Tilt Brush much faster and more efficient. It was used in the above image from Jeremy Cowles.

If you ever wanted to become a #VR artist, now is the time. The hull sculpting brush is a complete game changer and makes sculpting mass fast and SUPER efficient. This is the biggest #TiltBrush update since world scaling was introduced. I can’t wait to see what we all create😛 https://t.co/QlMpGeb0kM

— Danny Bittman (@DannyBittman) June 26, 2018

Perhaps more important, though, is the introduction of a Beginner mode. When you first launch Tilt Brush, you’ll start in this new mode, which limits the number of features and brushes available to you. This allows you to find your feet in what can be an initially overwhelming world. When you’re ready for bigger and better things, a simple tap of the Advanced Mode button will bring all of Tilt Brush’s features right to you.

There are also a host of minor improvements to the apps’ UI. For starters, a new Pin Tool allows you to lock objects in place, making it easy to change details around them without editing the object itself. On the flipside, you can now select all items in a sketch and invert selections you make. Finally, you can now hold the undo and redo buttons for a faster way of cycling through your changes.

Oh, and the ambient music has been updated, which is good news if you were getting sick of that.

We were super excited to learn that Hyperbolic Magnetism’s Beat Saber will be getting multiplayer earlier this week but, like you, we were left with one big question: “How the heck is that going to work?”

Well, the developers filled us all in.

(2/2) Avatars of other players will be placed on player’s left and right side. First version will contain default avatars, we plan to add custom avatars later. We’re now considering how to represent cubes coming at the opponent player.

— Beat Saber (@BeatSaber) June 26, 2018

Taking to Twitter, the studio explained that Beat Saber will be getting an initial multiplayer update in the near future with ‘very basic’ implementation. This will include competitive multiplayer in real-time with players competing for the best score. You’ll see avatars of your opponents to the left and right side.

We don’t know what plans Hyperbolic has for later down the line right now, though it did say that custom avatars are coming too. We’d love to see some sort of co-op option at some point as well.

For level editor fans, the team assured that the editing update will arrive before multiplayer, though neither has a solid date just yet.

Those that have opted into Oculus’ Public Test Channel now have new ways to outfit their Avatars.

Yesterday Oculus started rolling out the Rift 1.28 update to the beta testing channel. Those hoping for the arrival of some of Oculus Home’s long-promised features like multiplayer will be disappointed, but there are some neat additions here.

For starters, 1.28 introduces upgraded Oculus Avatars with new hair options, skin shading and clothes and eyewear designs. Better yet, there’s a new Avatar Editor mirror that you can place inside your Home environment for an easy-access wardrobe. You can even take the mirror into certain apps like Brass Tactics to change your look on the fly.

Elsewhere, Oculus Dash, Home and the Desktop app all now support a wider range of languages, including Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin American), Italian, Norwegian, and Polish. Just head to the Language Preference setting in the Oculus Desktop App to find your ideal setting.

Finally, Oculus is beginning to test out personalized app recommendations through the desktop app and there’s now the ability to select apps based on supported languages.

Not the biggest update, then, but Oculus is promising more news on Rift Core 2.0 arriving later this week, so hopefully we’ve got some exciting things to come.

ICYMI, we started rolling out the latest @OculusRift SI version 1.28 to the Public Test Channel, which includes the new Oculus Avatars and an Avatar Editor mirror you can use in Oculus Home. Stay tuned for more Rift Core 2.0 news later this week! https://t.co/ujYmJ9T2NH pic.twitter.com/V92VaSzOk3

Last year’s The Invisible Hours was one of the rare examples of a story-driven experience that really thrived inside VR. It made smart use of a time travelling mechanic and character interactions to weave a captivating narrative we won’t soon forget. We named it one of 2017’s most underrated VR experiences. Good news, then; one of the game’s writers is now working with Valve.

Rob Yescombe, a games writer that also worked on PSVR’s Farpoint, confirmed yesterday that he had been working for the SteamVR creator since last year. He’ll be moving into the company’s offices in a few week’s time in a Writer role.

I’ve been quietly working for Valve since The Invisible Hours. I’m moving into the office proper in a few weeks.

It is truly joyful to collaborate with such remarkable people. Every day is a revelation.

See you on the shop floor. pic.twitter.com/NBgcEAHxQq

— Rob Yescombe (@robyescombe) June 26, 2018

Yescombe didn’t say exactly what he was working on right now, but we’ve got our fingers crossed it’s for a VR project. We know that Valve is working on three full VR games and, given this end to Yescombe’s silence and the company’s recent reveal of its latest Knuckles controllers, we might finally be close to hearing about what they are. Perhaps another positive sign is that Yescombe also retweeted a message from another Valve staffer that’s on the hunt for VR developers in the Seattle area.

Last year, Valve lost one of its key writers, Chet Faliszek, who had become known as an important evangelist of the VR industry. It’s great to see Valve stocking up in the development department again, and we can’t wait to see what comes of it.

The next generation of Valve’s knuckle controllers adds a whole new list of new immersive interactions. Valve has begun rolling out the next evolution of their intuitive knuckle controller prototypes to developers which means a whole bunch of exciting upgrades and additions we being to look forward to. Referred to by Valve as Knuckles EV2,